Arvind Kejriwal takes his gloves off

Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal’s latest spat with the media reminds us of a painful irony of the modern era: evil does not enter the public domain stealthily; it marches in the open, often with aplomb, makes its wicked goals public, and yet is ignored by those who ought to know better. And when the malevolence establishes itself, a lot of surprise and indignation is expressed—despite the fact that every subsequent unpleasant event was openly preached and zealously espoused right from the beginning.

Consider the case of Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, some of whose extracts are:

“The Jews were responsible for bringing negroes into the Rhineland with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate.” “The longer I lived in Vienna, the stronger became my hatred for the promiscuous swarm of foreign peoples [from east Europe] which began to batten on that old nursery ground of German culture.” “We must eliminate the disproportion between our population and our area… Some of this land can be obtained from Russia… We must secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled.” “[The state] must see to it that only the healthy beget children.”

Almost three quarters of a century before Hitler announced his Nazi agenda, Marx and Engels propounded an equally, if not more, dangerous ideology—communism. In the Communist Manifesto (1848), they thundered, “Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can only be attained by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” Later communists like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao also never concealed their opinions and objectives.

Islamists all over the world, too, don’t feel shy in revealing their ultimate goal—global supremacy of Islam, imposition of Shariat, and dhimmitude for the non-believers. Yet, when there was September 11 or 26/11, there was shock and awe, as if something unexpected had happened.

Nor is anything unexpected in the way the AAP is behaving these days. When Arvind Kejriwal and his chums burst onto the political firmament—and especially after the party did well in Delhi Assembly polls—a large section of intellectuals and many media pundits saw in him a possible roadblock to the Modi juggernaut. So, AAP leaders’ sympathies with the Maoists and jihadists were ignored; the party’s predilection for the discredited socialism was downplayed; its policies were seldom scrutinized; and, in this age of media ubiquity, the party was allowed to peddle its lies.

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Arvind Kejriwal has proved to be a congenital liar (among other things, promised to throw Sheila Dikshit behind bars but did not act while in office) and dangerous perjurer (took oath to uphold the Constitution but violated it brazenly). He started hurling allegations at everybody he did not like—from Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders to big corporations and then the media. Emboldened by his success in Delhi polls, Arvind Kejriwal went on to threaten the media.

He threatened journalists that he would send them to jail. “Since past one year, the media has been drumming support for Modi in people’s minds. An aura is sought to be created that corruption would end and Ramrajya will come if Modi is elected,” Kejriwal said in Nagpur a few days ago. “Why such a thing is happening? Because businessmen have paid money to media and television channels to promote Modi.”

Anybody even slightly familiar with Indian politics knows that many journalists and media houses have continuously ran stories against the Gujarat chief minister. In fact, many of them hate Narendra Modi; this was a big factor in their earlier support for Arvind Kejriwal in the first place. And now Kejriwal himself accuses them of being pro-Modi!

There was outrage in the media. Comparisons were made about the AAP’s attitude and the mindset that was responsible for the Emergency. The point to note here is that there was nothing surprising in Kejriwal’s mendacity, antics, and bullying; they are part and parcel of Maoism that he and his buddies sympathize with. The AAP’s behavior is the natural corollary of its ideology.